Abstract

The language of radiology has gradually evolved from “the film” (the foundation of
radiology since Wilhelm Roentgen’s 1895 discovery of x-rays) to “the image,” an
electronic manifestation of a radiologic examination that exists within the bits and bytes
of a computer. Rather than simply storing and displaying radiologic images in
a static manner, the computational power of the computer may be used to enhance a
radiologist’s ability to visually extract information from the image
through image
processing and image manipulation algorithms.
Image
processing tools provide a broad spectrum of opportunities for
image enhancement. Gray-level manipulations such as histogram
equalization, spatial alterations such as geometric distortion correction, preprocessing
operations such as edge enhancement, and enhanced radiography techniques such as
temporal subtraction provide powerful methods to improve the diagnostic quality of an
image or to enhance structures of interest within an image.
Furthermore, these image
processing algorithms provide the building blocks of more advanced
computer vision methods. The prominent role of medical physicists and the AAPM in the
advancement of medical image
processing methods, and in the establishment of the “image” as the
fundamental entity in radiology and radiation oncology, has been captured in 35 volumes of
Medical
Physics.

126.X.-W. Xu and K. Doi, “Image feature analysis for computer-aided diagnosis: Detection of right and left hemidiaphragm edges and delineation of lung field in chest radiographs,” Med. Phys.23, 1613–1624 (1996).

Abstract

The language of radiology has gradually evolved from “the film” (the foundation of
radiology since Wilhelm Roentgen’s 1895 discovery of x-rays) to “the image,” an
electronic manifestation of a radiologic examination that exists within the bits and bytes
of a computer. Rather than simply storing and displaying radiologic images in
a static manner, the computational power of the computer may be used to enhance a
radiologist’s ability to visually extract information from the image
through image
processing and image manipulation algorithms.
Image
processing tools provide a broad spectrum of opportunities for
image enhancement. Gray-level manipulations such as histogram
equalization, spatial alterations such as geometric distortion correction, preprocessing
operations such as edge enhancement, and enhanced radiography techniques such as
temporal subtraction provide powerful methods to improve the diagnostic quality of an
image or to enhance structures of interest within an image.
Furthermore, these image
processing algorithms provide the building blocks of more advanced
computer vision methods. The prominent role of medical physicists and the AAPM in the
advancement of medical image
processing methods, and in the establishment of the “image” as the
fundamental entity in radiology and radiation oncology, has been captured in 35 volumes of
Medical
Physics.

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Anniversary Paper: Image processing and manipulation through the pages of
Medical Physics